It was Oswald Cobblepot’s third favorite thing in the world, after birds
and the dream with the feathered showgirls: anticipated profit.

Anticipating profit was actually better than achieving
profit, because once the job was done and you returned to the hideout, you
had what you had –kwak– and that was it. Four eagle’s head proofs or
four hundred. All that was left was counting it up. But anticipating
profit, that was a different bird altogether. There was no limit at this
stage. Who’s to say how many of the top tier rogues would want to
avail themselves of Matt Hagen’s services? Who could guess how the
true aristocrats of crime would put those talents of his to work? And
Oswald would dip his beak into each and every deal. Kwak-kwak-kwak,
yes, anticipated profit. It was his third-favorite thing in the world.

Cats seldom mope. Selina didn’t know what exactly was going on at
Wayne Manor; the situation was mysterious, disturbing, frustrating, and
possibly dangerous. But by late afternoon, she had found one taste of
cream to savor. It wasn’t much, but it was a tiny point of satisfaction
where she could focus her thoughts rather than letting them dwell on… Yes.
Well. Not dwelling on that.

The cream: Since embarking on this new life with Bruce, she’d found many
ways to keep Catwoman’s true nature alive. From the “exercise”
break-ins during her nightly prowls to the exhilarating rooftop and catlair
games she sometimes played with Batman…

He rolled right over and went to sleep. He said he was tired, he
rolled over, and went to sleep like she wasn’t even there. He…
No, it was pointless to keep drifting back to that. The only way to
find out what was going on was to get the job done: find a gold bar, get a
serial number, and see whatever the hell “Project Walapang” was set up to
show her. To get that job done, Catwoman needed to keep a clear head.
Stop moping and enjoy the cream.

She’d found many ways to keep Catwoman’s true nature alive. Now and
then, like with Aquaman’s Sub Diego job and the whole Zatanna fiasco, it
went beyond games and she had the chance to really scratch the old itch.
But even on those occasions there was one thing missing. She never
realized until now, although it was a vital part of a true cat-crime.
The furtive cat. The surreptitious feline. Visiting the museum,
jewelry store or gallery during the day in civilian attire, attending a
party at the penthouse and chatting up the host, getting a look at the place
up close and personal—And all the while seeming so innocent, and all the
while seeing so much. Beating the best alarm system was a rush.
Cracking an uncrackable safe, picking an unpickable lock. A good chase
across the rooftops culminating in a fevered scrap and scratch with Batman,
it was all a rush. But this was too. This was a rare and forgotten thrill,
making her plans right under their noses, acting so natural and so innocent,
not one of them ever guessing the wily cat was in their midst. Me-ow.

So Selina had breakfast. She approved Alfred’s menu (there might
come a time to bring Alfred into her confidence, but for now she thought it
best to view him as Bruce’s ally, not hers). She wrote a few letters
in the morning room before lunch. She went for a walk, she read a
magazine, she brushed Whiskers and Nutmeg, and she did her nails. To
all outward appearances, it was a deliciously lazy day around the manor.
But that night, by the time the Batmobile passed the turnoff to Country Club
Lane and sped off once more towards the city, Catwoman had her plan
completely worked out.

She started in the dining room. The idea had fluttered in her brain
since breakfast: four gold bars hidden in the house, grounds and cave;
that’s what he said. That meant there would be at least one in each
location, she was sure of it. That’s how his mind worked. And
he was catering to Catwoman, consciously and deliberately playing into what
he knew of Catwoman with this whole crazy setup “revamping manor security”
etc. So… What did he know about Catwoman with respect to Wayne
Manor? He knew the one piece she would have taken if she’d hit the
house when she was working. She’d told him: she would take the Turner
in the dining room. It was a crazy day, Pheromones and Batman
appearing out of the past like ghosts in a Shakespeare prologue. It was a
crazy day and it was about to get a lot crazier as that first temporal
anomaly erupted into a full cosmic crisis. But Bruce was not one to
forget a detail like that, no matter how much craziness was whirring around
his head. He would remember that she said she’d take the Turner.
So she spent lunch and dinner casually working out how.

Wayne Manor was built at a time when the dining room was seen as a stage.
It was meant for displaying artwork as emblems of the owner’s wealth and
taste. There was room for nine paintings altogether. All but two hung
from visible gold chains that rose to the top of the molding and disappeared
into the wall. Behind those walls, heavy rods and counterweights
supported the enormous weight of the frames. This archaic system was
no longer needed, modern materials offered a thousand less conspicuous ways
to hang pictures twice this size. But behind the wall, Selina knew
from the blueprints, there was nothing archaic. Those antique chains
were attached to a much more contemporary type of alarm. They were
wired into shock sensors, just like those at the museum, just like the ones
she showed Batman she could beat. Anyone moving a painting would,
theoretically, disturb the weight on the chains and set off the
alarm—despite there being no device whatsoever attached to, or anywhere
near, the pictures. It was very clever. What looked like an
outdated mechanism in an old house was really camouflage for a brilliant
high-tech trap.

The were only two ways around it that Catwoman could see: either prevent
the shock sensors from going off (which would be impossible without a
month’s preparation, a special magnet array from Kittlemeier, and three
henchmen) or else let the alarm “go off” but jam the signal, so it couldn’t
“tell” any other parts of the system when it detected a disturbance.

The difficulty was where to place the jammer. It couldn’t go on
the Turner, obviously, because the Turner was leaving the wall. It
couldn’t go behind the painting or anywhere that she’d have to touch
a painting in order to place it. So there was no way she could point
it at the sensor straight on, but there was one place where she could
come at it from the side. From the blueprints, Selina knew
there was a dumbwaiter connecting the dining room with the kitchen below.
Once upon a time, this small box elevator was used to bring food quickly and
discreetly from the kitchen. It was raised and lowered by pulleys and
that meant a sizeable cavity above the box, tall enough for her to crawl
into. She could affix her jammer to that inner wall where it would be
on a level with the sensors and close enough block any signal, then she
could easily get the Turner off the wall without—

…

After a frozen moment, Catwoman let out the breath she didn’t know she
was holding.

She’d been so focused on getting the Turner, she’d half-forgotten
her real aim was a gold bar. She’d opened the cabinet concealing the
dumbwaiter and lowered the box that acted as an elevator, thinking to crawl
up the pulley once it was out of the way… when she saw an object riding on
its “roof” as it lowered. It was a long, thin rectangle with a rich
dark sheen… She raised it back up to take a closer look. The
rectangle was embossed with a Bank of England seal, royal warrant, and the
serial number… 00570. Further down it said HK (made in Hong Kong, she
guessed absently). And the purity designation was just as she
remembered: 999.9. She removed the bar carefully—it wasn’t exactly
light—and stored it in the short-term hiding place she’d chosen in her
suite. Then she headed for the cave.

A minute later, she was staring at the Walapang screen again, breathing a
silent prayer as she typed 00579-HK999.9. She hit return and the
screen flashed. A new window opened. The heading indicated a
chapter from a forensics textbook on ballistics and blowback. But
substituted for the article was a small blurb from ROCKHOUND QUARTERLY:

…found by Michael Haili last fall. The reddish sandstone is
marbled with lava from both Mauna Loa, the earth’s largest volcano, and
Kilauea, the world’s most active. Because of the predominance of black
and red, Haili named the find Harley Quinn Kryptonite. Despite the
whimsical name, the sample contains no phosphorescent or florescent
properties…

Well that cleared up a lot! Harley Quinn Kryptonite, for Bast’s
sake! Thanks, Dark Knight, thank you ever so fucking much!
Selina hissed at the screen, then shut it down, remembering that she still
didn’t want to risk any more time at Batman’s workstation than she had to.

She headed into the trophy room, her mind racing. Clearly, the clue
might mean the obvious: Harley Quinn. But what could the Tassel Twit
possibly be involved in that would make Bruce go all Mission Impossible?
Kryptonite, on the other hand, meant Superman—and super-hearing and
super-powered enemies. That would certainly explain why Bruce wouldn’t
say anything openly. He had precautions on top of precautions for that
kind of super-eavesdropping, but if something had happened and he no longer
trusted those defenses, he wouldn’t take any chances.

Of course, it wouldn’t explain his turning off in bed.

But maybe she was reading too much into that. Maybe he really was
tired. It wasn’t impossible; he was human. Especially if he was
a human that had a problem with Superman, that would certainly be
exhausting.

Again she hissed. The first “clue,” if it could even be called
that, raised more questions than it answered, but it did confirm that she
had the right idea about “Project Walapang” and the numbers from the gold
bars. And that’s what brought her to this display case. She had
not chosen the trophy room as a random spot away from the workstation where
she could think over the implications of Harley Quinn Kryptonite.

Bruce said the bars would be hidden in the house, grounds, and cave.
And he was playing up to Catwoman. This particular case contained
an exploding question mark, a freeze ray, several hats tricked out with
microelectronics, and a handle of braided leather. It was one of her
earliest whips, a true cat-o-nine-tails. The case itself was polycarbon,
just like the one at the museum. She told him how it breaks on an
entirely different frequency from normal glass. A regular glass-break
detector won’t hear a thing if you break a plate of polycarbon, but this
wasn’t a “regular” glass-break detector. This discreet 3-inch square
protruding from the side of the display case had a tiny recessed silhouette
of a bat etched into its surface.

If she broke this “glass,” this device would be set to the right
frequency, it would hear the sound and send a signal… where? Checking
the base, she could see it wasn’t hardwired to anything. It was another
wireless transmitter, which meant she could jam it just like she had with
the Turner. She rummaged in her pouch and found a Kittlemeier
exclusive the size of a cell phone. She pointed its eye delicately at
the case and focused it on the detector’s transmitter, then pressed a
button. Keeping the button depressed, she turned slowly until she
heard a faint click like that of a Geiger counter. She took a step in
that direction and was rewarded with another click—then another—then
another—until she reached the wall. She looked down at the device then
up at the wall again. It was a wall. A stone wall—in a cave, and
no different from any other patch of wall in the cave. He couldn’t
have a receiver inside a stone wall, it wasn’t like plaster in the
manor, there were no seams or inlets. And it’s not like you could just
put up a new cavewall like hanging drywall or scaffolding to cover up a…
wait a minute…

… actually…

You could. He could.

Holding her breath, Selina reached out her hand until the clawtips just came
into contact with the edge of the… edge of… she stretched her hand out further,
giddy at the discovery. Her fingers and then her entire hand passed right
through the “solid rock.”

Only Patient J. Only Patient J could ruin a delightful alleviating
mechanism like Barefoot Contessa!

Bartholomew knew there was nothing inherently wrong with a mild obsession
connected to a diverting new pastime. It was perfectly normal to
reflect on it, now and then, throughout the day, so long as it did not
distract one from his or her responsibilities. So when Harleen noticed
the shopping list on his desk, Bartholomew saw no harm in telling her about
the new show he was watching, or his plans to make Asian grilled salmon,
zucchini vichyssoise and pear clafouti that evening.

She said she didn’t like fish and made a face. She said clafouti
was a funny word. She said zucchini and vichyssoise were funny words
too, and she laughed for five minutes. That was the extent of the interest
Harley expressed at the time. But she evidently told Patient J about the
conversation, because he devoted his entire session that afternoon to the
“pleasures” of watching Ina Garten cook! He called her the zaftig
culinariast (which was not a word, Dr. Bartholomew looked it up as soon
as Patient J left his office), and revealed that it was only marathon
sessions of Barefoot Contessa which enabled him to get through his
recent “Ha-Ha-Harley drought, HAHAHAHA!”

The doctor could only stare in mute horror as Patient J giggled and
guffawed his way through Ina’s special recipe for 40 clove chicken!
“And the smashed potatoes, DOC! Have you tried the smashed potatoes…”

Bartholomew felt ill. But he couldn’t end the session, this was, by
Patient J’s standards, something of a breakthrough, opening up this way
about a personal endeavor unconnected to killing Batman, killing Robin,
killing Nightwing, or killing F. Murray Abraham.

“Just something about the way Miss Garten kneads her rump roasts, Doc.
Mmmm. Makes me want to do a little ‘cooking’ of my own!
HAHAHAHAhahahahahahahahhahaaa!”

Professionally, it was an astonishing breakthrough. But now,
Bartholomew was having a hard time concentrating on the show or his cooking
because all he could think about was Patient J and his “marathon sessions”
with Ina.

Damn, he was brilliant. Amazingly, fiendishly, wonderfully,
diabolically brilliant. Catwoman was equally thrilled with her
own cleverness in figuring it out as she was with Bruce’s unbelievable
genius. Now she only had to figure what was generating the hologram
and block it. There could be dozens of projectors to make the effect
seem solid from any angle, but she only had to disrupt the illusion enough
to see inside. She reinitialized Kittlemeier’s device, focusing it
this time on the hologram itself and giggled anew as it indicated the “glass
break detectors” on the different cases that were, in fact, the source of
the holographic projection. She quickly taped over the one on the whip
case and looked back at the illusion wall. She squinted, just making
out a “wrongness” in the look of the rock. It still looked solid, but
the colors and shadows were off. She reasoned that the most important
projectors would be the most out-of-the-way. The more remote a box
was, the less likely anyone could step into its path and block its beams.
Knowing that made it easy. She taped over a second box, and then a
third. When she looked back at the hologram again, it was no longer
solid. The “wall” was still visible but transparent, and “inside” it,
Selina could see a small alcove with a safe-door built into the wall.
It was just large enough that a person could stand in the alcove in front of
the safe, and be completely covered by the hologram. Knowing that
much, she removed the tape and slipped into the alcove to get a closer look.

She’d never seen anything like it. The manor and cave were full of
various safes and lockboxes; none were that unusual. Upstairs, the
typical fire and burglary safes protected the typical family heirlooms,
stock certificates, old and current deeds to the land, manor and other
holdings. Downstairs, the typical laboratory locks sealed off vials of
Scarecrow toxin, Smile-X, and fluid from the Lazarus Pits. There were
a few paper filing cabinets that locked exactly the same way all locking
file cabinets locked. It was all top quality gear, but nothing really
out of the ordinary. This, on the other hand… well she couldn’t
say it was “from outer space.” She’d been to the Watchtower and she’d
dismantled the Justice League system; she had seen enough truly alien
technology to wreck that simile. This wasn’t Martian, Kryptonian or
Thanagarian. It was just—Brucian.

First, there was the metal. It didn’t look like your standard steel
or titanium safe door—which was hardly a shock. Superman did visit the
cave now and then, and Selina always wondered why someone with Bruce’s
suspicion and sense of personal privacy was okay with that. This safe
would be the answer. If this metal was what she guessed, some kind of
titanium-lead alloy, then he did have someplace completely shielded from
prying eyes… which underlined the Kryptonite half of the Harley Quinn
Kryptonite clue, didn’t it?

The safe had a double lock: a traditional dial and an electronic keypad.
Neither posed a significant obstacle. A fairly simple clawtip trick
applied to the correct wire caused the keypad to resend the last combination
punched in. The traditional dial lock would be trickier. If this
titanium-lead alloy could be drilled at all, it would probably require a
special drill bit. Kittlemeier would make one out of whatever material
she specified, but that meant time she didn’t have. Drilling would
also make noise and leave a conspicuous hole in the front of the safe door.
None of that seemed prudent… Without that ability to insert a camera and see
the tumblers moving as she worked the dial, Catwoman had no choice but to
crack the safe the old fashioned way, manipulating the lock to detect the
contact points as each wheel moved a notch into position. Many thieves
considered this practice “taking the high road.”
It was a rare skill, safecracking at its purest. It required no tools
or special equipment, only a good ear, an understanding of the mechanism,
and patience. Only the last presented a challenge.

Catwoman could turn a—Click—safedial the way Riddler did
crosswords, noting the soft tick of the drive pin almost subconsciously and—Click—mentally
connecting them to a contact range that represented a notch inside the
mechanism and a parking point on the dial… if only Selina would—Click—keep
her thoughts focused on the task at hand… 12 and 15, the first number is
between 12 and 16, no 15…12 and 15… If only she could keep from
replaying that scene from the night before. If only she could stop
thinking about—Click—Bruce rolling over and going to sleep, barely
even acknowledging—Click—Focus, damnit.

She had to leave the alcove, lean with her back to the wall and take a
series of deep breaths… She was too experienced a thief to panic when she
heard a noise in the costume vault. She did take off her mask
and gloves, to appear more casual in case she was spotted, and then
stealthily checked the Batmobile hanger. The primary car was still
missing. That meant it was Alfred in the vault. It also meant it
wasn’t nearly as late as she thought.

She returned to the alcove and hid inside the hologram. She didn’t
touch the dial, she just looked at it and waited. Two locks. Jesus.
Hidden inside a hologram in an already hidden cave, and it’s still under two
locks—actually three, now that she was looking more closely. There
appeared to be a small pressure switch under the lip of the door. She
knew those, they were all the rage about ten years ago, you had to press
them at the same time you turned the handle for the door to actually open.
So technically three locks, INSIDE a hologram INSIDE the fucking Batcave.
This was getting a little scary. Could this really be what he wanted
her to break into?

He did say look into anything. He said it twice. Anything.

Taking a final breath, she recited the digits she’d already picked off,
and went back to work. Ninety minutes later, she depressed that hidden
pressure switch and turned the handle. She closed her eyes, reminded
the Universe that she never signed on for any of this and all she’d really
done was kiss a man in a mask, and finally, she looked inside.

Two boxes rested on top of a gold bar identical to the one in the
dumbwaiter. Underneath that was a stack of folders and manila
envelopes. The bar was her objective, obviously, but only ten seconds
trial-and-error made it perfectly clear that both the gold and one of the
boxes were too heavy for her to just slide the bar out without disturbing
anything else. So she removed the larger box first, and immediately
discovered it was the light one. Mahogany. With a gold W inlaid
on the top and a simple latch. It opened to reveal a broken,
incomplete string of pearls… a well-worn leather wallet with the initials TW
monogrammed in the corner and dark stain of what Selina could only assume
was blood… a pair of wedding bands and a remarkably beautiful engagement
ring… and a worn, rabbit-eared photograph of Thomas and Martha Wayne with an
adorable 8-year-old Bruce at one of those rustic New England marinas.

Selina squelched the guilt, closed the box, and set it gently on the
floor. The small box was next, and as soon as she touched it, she
realized this was indeed the heavy one. It was lead. After the
personal nature of the first box, she was loath to open a second, but
lead (particularly when there was a kryptonite clue on the table) wasn’t
something she could ignore. She opened it.

Inside was a single object: a man’s ring. Her jewel-thief’s eye
appraised the material as high-grade platinum. It surrounded a single
square stone, vibrant green, smooth and polished, with a beautiful internal
luminescence like uncut emerald. It had to be kryptonite.
And in her mind’s ear, she realized Superman had mentioned it once. He
said he knew Bruce had gone off to put “that ring” in his belt. At the time,
she had no idea what it meant but… well, evidently here it was. She
replaced the ring in the box and set it on the floor at her feet beside the
first one. Then she carefully maneuvered the gold bar out of the safe,
took down the number, and paused, uncertain how to proceed.

Superman had mentioned the ring but Bruce never did. Now he was
letting her find it. Harley Quinn Kryptonite and now a Kryptonite
ring. She wondered if it was coincidence or if she should go through
the rest of the safe. Maybe it was just a place to stash a gold bar
and whatever else happened to be in the safe happened to be there—and maybe
it wasn’t. Selina looked for a long, wondering moment at the stack of
files and envelopes. Then she restored the gold bar rather than taking
it, and replaced both boxes on top just as she’d found them. It was
that photograph, Bruce with his parents, the pearls and the wallet and the
wedding rings. Unless and until she was absolutely sure she was meant
to go through that stuff, she wouldn’t pry any further. She had the
serial number from the second bar. That was enough to continue with
Project Walapang.

It wasn’t exactly logical. She was supposed to find the bar, ergo
she was supposed to take the bar—Hiss, screw it. This wasn’t a
time for logic; this was a cat-crime. And Selina had always let
instinct dictate what left a safe and came home with her, and what stayed
right where it was. The serial number would come with her; the gold,
for now, would stay where it was.

As before, Selina returned to the workstation and pulled up the Walapang
screen. This time, once she typed in the code, she was rewarded with a
much longer document inserted into a scholarly article on fingerprints.

While it may or may not resemble the human organ,
Clayface certainly does have a “brain” in that there is a central
consciousness that controls his body. It does so through electrochemical
messages like the firing of human neurons to tense a muscle, hence why he
cannot hold his form together when he gets wet. The more conductive
the liquid, the faster he loses control of the surface matter and breaks
apart.

The key to incapacitating him (and possibly the key to curing his condition REF:
Special Foundation Initiative §4, Humanitarian), is therefore to change
the conductive and insulating qualities of his mass until his “brain” cannot get
those electrical “tense the muscle” commands to his surface tissue. This
can likely be accomplished by saturating him with hydrogen, a highly pressurized
stream of hydrogen, ideally with a nickel catalyst and at elevated temperatures.
The result would break the carbon double bonds in his clay, lowering the
temperature at which it turns from liquid to solid. Once a sufficient
amount of his body is affected, solidifying at room temperature into insulating
matter, he can no longer get the signals from his brain to his surface mass to
morph or even move.

The difficulty, of course, is that the process cannot be adequately tested on
isolated samples of clay-matter. Without Hagen’s brain actively
manipulating a sample while it is being treated, the researcher cannot gauge the
proper level of H-saturation for stability/immobility without risking permanent,
catastrophic harm to the subject.… … … … :: :: :: ::
:: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::
:: … … …

Selina’s heart started pounding as soon as she saw the name Hagen.
Hagen a.k.a. Clayface, a.k.a. shapeshifter, a.k.a. this was bad.

“Project Walapang” started to make sense if he had to make sure she
wasn’t an imposter. He had certainly hidden the clues in ways only
Catwoman’s expertise would think to find them… But she wasn’t the
imposter, although she was starting to have a hunch who might be.

It wasn’t Bruce, that was one thing she could be sure of. Clayface could
replicate almost anyone visually, he could mimic most voices and mannerisms
with an actor’s skill, but the one thing he couldn’t come close to was
smell. When Bruce came to bed, she knew that musk of leather, sweat,
and cave damp better than she knew her own. It was Bruce; that smell
was unique as a fingerprint and no mud-being with no olfactory senses of his
own could come close to replicating it. It was Bruce—it was Bruce that came
into bed, said he was tired, and rolled over like she wasn’t even there.

Damnit.

Focus.

She closed Batman’s typically over-thought treatise on how to defeat
Clayface, and made a quick trip to the hellmouth closet for a much simpler
weapon.

It was a risk. It was getting late enough that Batman might return
at any time. But it was a bigger risk to wait. If Selina was
right and Bruce came home and caught her, it wouldn’t matter. If she
was wrong—

Well, if she was wrong she was going to feel like an absolute moron.
And even when Bruce wasn’t acting too suspicious to be trusted, she would
prefer he not see her behaving like a total idiot. Nevertheless, Hagen
a.k.a. Clayface a.k.a. shapeshifter a.k.a. we could be in some serious,
serious trouble and it’s not a time to worry about looking like an idiot.

She stopped in the kitchen and added a cup of kosher salt to the chamber,
recalling “the more conductive the liquid, the faster he loses
control”—typically convoluted bat-speak for “Use salt water.” She
returned to the cave, casually tossed an oilcloth over Workstation 1, then
pulled out the SuperSoaker with vicious speed and subjected the bat Walapang
to a sustained thirty-second spray.

The huge glacier in the center of the Iceberg Lounge divided in half,
revealing one of those golden, carpeted staircases like in the old Hollywood
musicals. The band struck up Puttin on the Ritz as Oswald
Chesterfield Cobblepot descended—in an even more dapper tuxedo than
usual—twirling his umbrella instead of a cane while feathered showgirls
crossed before him on each step…

In his sleep, Oswald’s lips quivered as his dreamself surveyed the
Iceberg crowd and mentally calculated the night’s receipts… the cover charge
alone… a World Without Batman cover charge, for an extra $20
per person (with a 4 drink minimum, $6 extra if you want your igloo in a
souvenir glass), patrons would enjoy a Gotham City in which no Batman
existed—no bats of any kind, no winged creatures at all except birds.
Properly feathered birds—like the lovely Raven and Roxy crossing before him
on the bottom step and flitting ever so delicately into his arms as he
proceeded into the dining room.

“I’m very sorry,” Selina told the drenched and shell-shocked bat as she
wrapped it in a towel while its little friend squawked and squeaked and
fluttered overhead. “I said I was sorry,” she told it. The bat
seemed dazed more than hurt. His ear was sort of bent back the wrong
way and he’d probably breathed in more salt water than he’d have liked.
But he had worked his one wing out of the towel already, that was a good
sign. Selina rewrapped him and did a quick feel along his shoulders
the way she would check a cat for injuries. He was holding his legs and back
strangely, but that straightened out once he was dried off and warmed up.

“Now look, Stud,” she told him with a hint of her old rooftop manner, “I
know I’m not exactly in a position to ask a favor, but it’s going to look
really suspicious if you don’t go back to your perch. So could we
please, just this once, overlook the fact that Kitty had her fingers in the
Tiffany’s vault—or in this case, thought you were a shape shifting intruder
and nearly drowned you with eighty-plus ounces of sustained saltwater
dousing?”

The bat extracted itself from the towel and screeched spitefully at her
hand before flapping back to its companion on the perch.

“Good enough,” Selina sighed.

She started cleaning up the workstation, and glanced back at the trophy
room. If there was any question of an imposter among them, maybe she should
go through the safe after—too late. She heard the first growl of the
Batmobile engine approaching the cave entrance. Within a second, it
grew to a roar—usually a welcome roar, but not tonight. She hurriedly
grabbed the remains of cotton swabs, oil cloth and towels, and sprinted
toward the stairs just as the walls began to rumble from the car entering
the hangar.